Danica Patrick is one of the fittest women around. The NASCAR legend frequently shares her fitness and health routines on Instagram, where fans can watch her absolutely brutal workout moves in action.
On Monday, the workout fiend shared one more trick everyone should master — or at least try to: The yoga handstand.
In the clip, Patrick shows off her impressive walking handstand as she makes her way down the shore of Daytona Beach, Florida, where she will compete in the second-to-last race of her career before retiring.
Of course, this isn’t the only body-bending move the race car driver has shared on social media. The Pretty Intense author been a longtime advocate of practicing yoga as part of an overall strength and fitness regime.
Here she is showing off her impressive backbend skills:
Here’s Patrick practicing with a friend:
And here's one more handstand for the road:
“Breath is the one thing that I really do use from yoga in the race car,” Patrick told the Orlando Sentinel. “When things get tense it’s in through the nose, out through the mouth. Inevitably it calms your heart rate down. It calms you down. I by all means use breath in the car, which is something that I’ve used in yoga.”
Though it’s cool to look at Patrick perform yoga stunts on Instagram, it’s even better to use her as inspiration for your own practice. Every guy could benefit from adding at least a few forward bends and downward dogs to their daily grind, even if it’s just to prevent injury and burnout. (If it’s good enough for Special Ops, it’s good enough for you.)
"My entire fitness program was based off of exertion, pushing my body and mind to the limit almost every day," Brendan Rooney, an instructor at YogaWorks in New York City, previously told Men's Health about his own personal yoga revelation. "Eventually, the constant ‘go-go-go, push-push-push, more-more-more’ caught up with me through various injuries, burn out, and boredom. I needed something that could balance the force I exerted running and weight lifting."
For men, yoga can help with a plethora of common issues — even premature ejaculation. A study from India found that when compared to receiving medication, men who implemented a yoga practice saw a 100 percent success rate in improving their sexual performance versus an 82 percent success rate on the meds.
Beyond performing in the bedroom, yoga could help you perform better at work, too. According to a 2013 study of 367 workers from the Netherlands, adding yoga and workouts to their daily lives led to “greater feelings of workplace vitality” and lower levels of fatigue.
That’s not all. Check out the five reasons all guys should be hitting the yoga mat more often, and learn a few key moves to get more explosive strength by stretching your body out the right way.
